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So what's canon, Encore Mode and/or Mania Adventure


Auroxen

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This is something that has been bugging me since the release of Sonic Mania Plus, the fact that both Encore Mode and Sonic Mania Adventures are supposed to take place immediately after Classic Sonic returns to his world and because of this they seem to not be able to coexist 

This issue came back to my mind just now because I checked the Classic Sonic World page on the wiki and it lists the events of both the game and the short series, without even trying to explain in what way they can both happen, and I don't like that this contraddiction is blatantly ignored

Because of this I want to see what the general opinion here is, which one do you think is canon? If you think they are both canon, how can that be?

Personally I would like to see both of them be canon but I can't think of a way to make that possible, even putting another adventure between Encore Mode and Mania Adventures where both Eggman (as seen in the Encore Mode true ending) and Sonic (because we see him return again at the start of Mania Adventures) end up in the Modern Sonic World doesn't fix the issue because in that case both Eggman and Sonic would need to come back at the same time at the start of Mania Adventures and that doesn't seem to be the case at all (Eggman seems to have been searching for the Chaos Emeralds for quite a bit before Sonic turns up)

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The correct canon is; Mania, then Forces, then Mania Plus. Mania Adventures was made to promote Mania Plus. Adventures isn't canon, it's a kind of spin-off or different take on Sonic returning to Angel Island after the events of Forces.

Mania Plus story clearly takes place directly after Forces (Sonic arriving back on Angel Island-returning from Forces in a portal after travelling to Forces via a similar portal at the end of Mania in Egg Reverie zone). To be fair it's not 100% clear that Mania Plus story takes place directly after Forces, (much like it not being completely clear that Knuckles story in 3&K takes place directly after Sonic defeats Eggman in Doomsday zone), however, there's enough story to heavily imply this is what happens.

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I look at Adventures as what happened immediately after Mania's good ending, whereas Encore mode is just some bonus thing where I don't think about the story or how it makes sense for events to play out 100% the same

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Exactly. Mania Plus is a game, Mania Adventures is a webseries made to promote the game. Hence the game is canon. 

Also I want to say something: I think the split timeline theory is correct and... even canon to be honest.

Generations split the timeline in two, because in that game Classic characters are indeed from the past, it's not explicitly said but there are various indirect hints, like Classic Eggman saying "So I will become THAT crazy?", and at the end Sonic and Tails don't forget the events of Generations, Sonic even says "enjoy your future, it's gonna be great!" They are clearly from the past. And Sonic Forces says the Classic Sonic from Mania is indeed the ones they saw in Generations, since Sonic says "It's been generations since I saw you!".

Now I know I shouldn't rely on what the writers put into Sonic's mouth, but that's been authorized by SEGA, right? And if we don't believe what Sonic and friends say, a.k.a. the word of canon God, what are we supposed to base the canon on?

And obviously Classic Sonic's canon timeline is Sonic 1 -> Sonic 2 -> Sonic CD -> Sonic 3 & Knuckles -> Sonic Generations -> Sonic Mania -> Sonic Forces -> Encore Mode. So... basically, the classics (the ones that matter at least) happen in both timelines, then Generations created the Mania timeline where only the classic games are canon, plus Mania and Plus happen, and Classic Sonic (as Ian Flynn stated again that he is indeed Sonic from the past) becomes from another dimension, the Mania timeline, who crosses over again with Modern in Forces.

It's not that complicated, I actually like this theory. So Classic Sonic is both younger Sonic (Generations) and from a different dimension (Mania and Forces). Younger Sonic evolved into Modern and now the only Classic Sonic is from the Mania world, simple as that. I think it's canon because it's what actually happened with Sega's weird decisions and plans, in Generations Classic was clearly supposed to be from the past, then they decided to make a new classic game and have Sonic be from a different dimension and have him cross paths with Modern again. So plans changed.

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Encore Mode is probably the technically the 'most canon' as it's the game, but it's clearly just a bonus story and doesn't really have much new or interesting to offer. Plus it has the Phantom Ruby make a return, which we should kind of believe was destroyed in Forces, I think? It doesn't make sense. But then Mania Adventures has the oddities with the Chaos Emeralds... Despite the Emeralds scattering at the end of Egg Reverie, their whereabouts are strange in Adventures with Sonic already having the green one at the start.

I guess it doesn't matter. They can't both happen, but as they both end with Sonic winning and Eggman getting blasted off to God knows where... Meh. Either works as well as the other so long as you remember that they are mutually exclusive. I'll take Adventures because of the character interactions rather than a retread of Mania. 

Also because I want to live in a world where this scene is canon:

Y6kzOs.gif

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Plot twist: neither are canon, classic Sonic's story ends when he gets back from Forces. 

But seriously, the handling of the post-Forces story has been a mess.

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My suggestion: let's wait for sequel and see if Mania 2 addresses Encore Mode (mostly disappearing Eggman). If not, let's crew Encore.

Let;s be honest, Encore Mode "story" is stupid. Heavies are broken, even though they all escaped after respective boss fight, repeating the whole journey has no sense, why is Eggman doing this again, what is Heavy King doing with those ice  cream... it's just stupid. Making it 100% artificially non-canon would be a better option.

I'll take colorful Mania Adventures world anytime. Yeah, the Green Emerald sorta messes it up, but it such a tiny nitpick I won't loose sleep over it.

So for now Encore is cannon, but if sequels give me excuse, I'll dethrone it without second though.

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Personally I'm beyond caring about trying to reconcile the two or figure out which is supposed to be canon. If we even do get more classic dimension games it's probably not going to matter which post-Forces events happen because they end in basically the same state; Mighty and Ray are back, everything else has no real consequence. And even if it does end up mattering, we won't know that until they reveal some connection to one of them, and then we'll have our answer, so there's no need to fret about it now.

While it is kind of a shame that we can't just slot everything together into one coherent narrative, that doesn't take away from the experience that each of them offered. I'd much rather have both Mania Adventures and Encore mode as incompatible but still individually enjoyable adventures than to shut one out for the sake of a consistent canon that's probably never going to amount to anything anyway.

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5 hours ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

My suggestion: let's wait for sequel and see if Mania 2 addresses Encore Mode (mostly disappearing Eggman). If not, let's crew Encore.

I'll take colorful Mania Adventures world anytime. Yeah, the Green Emerald sorta messes it up, but it such a tiny nitpick I won't loose sleep over it.

So for now Encore is cannon, but if sequels give me excuse, I'll dethrone it without second though.

Lost World didn´t address Eggman being stuck in a limbo in any sense, so why exactly should Mania sequel address that ?

 

For me, Mania Adventures seems like a canon story. The Green Emerald... well, I do think Sonic found it as he went through the part of Angel Island (because, even animes don´t show the whole A to B thing). Plus Sonic is waving in the beginning as he did in the Forces end.

6 hours ago, Silent Jack said:

And obviously Classic Sonic's canon timeline is Sonic 1 -> Sonic 2 -> Sonic CD -> Sonic 3 & Knuckles -> Sonic Generations -> Sonic Mania -> Sonic Forces -> Encore Mode.

Why anyone keep saying that ? In Generations Eggman erased all his setbacks, so Generations for the "Classic" or "Mania" Sonic starts right before the Green Hill Zone Boss from Sonic 1. Classic Tails sort of happens, because:

1) There is Modern Sonic and Modern Tails

2) cutscene after Chemical Plant

Plus at the end, Classic Sonic and Classic Tails are going via the hole to Green Hill Zone... don´t forget about that.

Another thing, Sonic CD does not have any real settings in when it happened. Though I agree the canon timeline, except for one thing...

As I see it: Sonic 1 (Green Hill) -> Sonic Generations -> rest of Sonic 1 (now with Tails) -> Sonic 2 -> Sonic CD -> Sonic 3 & Knuckles -> Sonic Mania -> Sonic Forces -> Encore Mode.

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Always just assumed that either Encore is the canon one because it's from the actual game, or whatever is canon would come in Mania 2. Personally, I don't care much which is canon. The Mania story gets screwed up the moment Mania ends and goes into Sonic Forces territory. It's a shame that something simple like a story revolving around the Phantom Ruby, or a classic Sonic story couldn't be handled correctly and have full cohenrency and consistency. 

Always just assumed that either Encore is the canon one because it's from the actual game, or whatever is canon would come in Mania 2. Personally, I don't care much which is canon. The Mania story gets screwed up the moment Mania ends and goes into Sonic Forces territory. It's a shame that something simple like a story revolving around the Phantom Ruby, or a classic Sonic story couldn't be handled correctly and have full cohenrency and consistency. 

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To be honest, it's unclear how much of Mania is going to be canon with Sonic Team's future projects. The Ruby has little importance in Mania beyond being a narrative lever. Will we see the Hard Boiled Heavies again? What happened to the Titanic Monarch? Has Eggman abandoned it? Even the future of Mighty and Ray is uncertain.

It's unlikely that any of these events will have any significance in future Sonic games. And unfortunately, I'm of the opinion that a Mania follow up might not necessarily happen.

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Unless a game directly follows on from what happens to Eggman in Encore mode's ending, I personally prefer to consider Encore to be the bonus "What If?" story, because of how whatever it is and how little sense it makes for all the events of Mania to happen all over again exactly the same.  And even when you say "because the phantom ruby" that's... just a boring story instead of a non-sensical one.

So yeah, Mania Adventures would be my preferred canon.

Officially speaking, Aaron Webber, the face of Sonic PR and therefore an official representative for the series, did say "whichever one you want" is canon.

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Just for fun let's complicate this even further with this needless little conspiracy I've just noticed! 😁

Spoiler

image.png

 

Spoiler

fghfghfh.png

The Phantom Ruby was here all this time! 😂

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5 hours ago, superman43 said:

Lost World didn´t address Eggman being stuck in a limbo in any sense, so why exactly should Mania sequel address that ?

 

For me, Mania Adventures seems like a canon story. The Green Emerald... well, I do think Sonic found it as he went through the part of Angel Island (because, even animes don´t show the whole A to B thing). Plus Sonic is waving in the beginning as he did in the Forces end.

Why anyone keep saying that ? In Generations Eggman erased all his setbacks, so Generations for the "Classic" or "Mania" Sonic starts right before the Green Hill Zone Boss from Sonic 1. Classic Tails sort of happens, because:

1) There is Modern Sonic and Modern Tails

2) cutscene after Chemical Plant

Plus at the end, Classic Sonic and Classic Tails are going via the hole to Green Hill Zone... don´t forget about that.

Another thing, Sonic CD does not have any real settings in when it happened. Though I agree the canon timeline, except for one thing...

As I see it: Sonic 1 (Green Hill) -> Sonic Generations -> rest of Sonic 1 (now with Tails) -> Sonic 2 -> Sonic CD -> Sonic 3 & Knuckles -> Sonic Mania -> Sonic Forces -> Encore Mode.

Because logically, Eggman is NOT in a limbo realm, but the Modern world, and also because the Mania developers care. 

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I have to say it make me angry that this new classic subseries was born one year ago and they already managed to somehow screw up the canon.

It should have been easy, it was an opportunity to have a simple Game 1 -> Game 2 -> Game 3 etc. sequence but no, they had to do this weird thing.

I honestly don't think it would have been impossible to make Mania Adventure a direct sequel to Sonic Forces and then setting Encore Mode after that or viceversa.

You can say that canon is not that important and while I like Sonic canon I can somewhat agree, but the fact is that it would have been VERY easy to not screw the canon up this time since they are starting almost from scratch and it's almost like they went out of their way to do that

 

I guess for now this is a "chose your headcanon" situation where you can chose one of them to be the sequel you want to be canon for yourself, I hope the situation is made more clear in the future with an eventual proper sequel to Mania

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Let's muddle things a bit more. Does anyone watches Sonic Dissected here?

Roger pointed out that Encore Mode shows Sonic coming back WITH PHANTOM RUBY. Forces ends with Sonic coming back alone. So comparing the poses, Encore Mode seems to it's ignore existence of Forces... just to confuse things further.

Quick question, I know Encore is part of the game, so in "more cannon", but who bloody cares whenever it happened or not? It's exactly the same journey, just with different colors and headache (again, unless later games make something with it). Even Mighty & Ray aren't special as you can play with them in normal mode.

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19 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Let's muddle things a bit more. Does anyone watches Sonic Dissected here?

Roger pointed out that Encore Mode shows Sonic coming back WITH PHANTOM RUBY. Forces ends with Sonic coming back alone. So comparing the poses, Encore Mode seems to it's ignore existence of Forces... just to confuse things further.

The only spanner in the works here is that the digital manual for Mania explicitly states that Encore follows Forces (in a vague non-advertisementy way at least, it mentions how Encore begins with Sonic returning to his world after being a part of "the resistance" or something like that), so either way it's still it's own take on the follow-up to Forces even if it's inconsistent with Forces' ending.  In Encore, the Ruby came back, in Adventures, it didn't.

I was just typing up a post about how if one wanted to, you could imagine Encore is actually Sonic arriving in yet another parallel universe, explaining how he can retravel the same events and places but with all these slight visual differences, and that this story could follow either Forces OR ignore Forces and come straight after Mania mode if people wanted... but then I remembered that detail from the manual so forget the last part lol.

 

It does highlight what a shame it is that the Phantom Ruby is such a "do whatever the writers feel like" plot device without any limitations out of necessity for bringing back all these classic levels gameplay-wise, lol (and then in Forces, making Infinite seem like an intangible enemy).

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8 hours ago, Miragnarok said:

Because logically, Eggman is NOT in a limbo realm, but the Modern world, and also because the Mania developers care. 

Don´t make me laugh. The overall story (Mania, Forces) had to have an influence from either Sonic Team or SEGA executives themselves as they had in Generations and Lost World.

And honestly, this is the answer:

11 hours ago, JezMM said:

Officially speaking, Aaron Webber, the face of Sonic PR and therefore an official representative for the series, did say "whichever one you want" is canon.

He wouldn´t say anything if there was more to it. But there simply is not. Mania is over, sequel is TBD, maybe there won´t be any, who knows. The success doesn´t always mean a secured spot for a sequel.

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The Phantom Ruby isn't seen coming with Classic Sonic in Forces either (as it appeared in the Modern timeline 6 month before Classic Sonic). So I'm not sure it really rules out Sonic Mania : Encore Mode. It's assumed that Classic Sonic got here because of the Phantom Ruby, but not really the opposite. (It's not really said that it's the same, maybe it appeared on two timelines)

Personnaly, I would prefer Sonic Mania Adventure to be canon (as Encore is basically a retelling of Mania, which isn't the first time it happen though), but I think that basically the encore mode is "canon" (or neither), and that Sonic Mania Adventure is basically some kind of "simpler adaptation" to the Encore mode. It takes the core points of Encore (post Forces, Sonic coming out from the Portal in Angel Island, and Mighty & Ray being part of the story) but retell it in a simpler way, without some things that could become clutter in the 10-minutes format of Sonic Mania Adventure (the H-B Heavies, the level progression, the return of the Phantom Ruby…) and with some part totally new. In some respect, it remind me of a lot of old game adaptation that did basically the same : keeping just some core point and doing stuff on top on that. (and I'm totally fine with that).

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It's a close call but at the end of the day I will have to side with Adventures. Encore mode doesn't make a lot of sense, and although it can all be explained by "uhhh the phantom ruby did it" I feel that Adventures is a more fitting end to the Mania saga. This is just like the Sonic Boom thing where they had four companies working on different games, comics, and the show and everyone freaked out because of how confusing it was. Its like for every spinoff two more timelines are created :/

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I personally prefer Adventures to be canon, at least it has a narrative besides being part of the game and despite Sonic having the green emerald at the start (that also confused me). But honestly none of that matters since this kind of thing is almost never clear.

 

I think Boxer Hockey pretty much said something similar to Aron on the Sonic Retro boards, whatever you think is canon, is canon.

 

From now on, when shit doesn't make sense with anything Sonic related, just say "the Phantom Ruby did it".

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On 9/3/2018 at 9:45 PM, RadicalLaRuby said:

I think Boxer Hockey pretty much said something similar to Aron on the Sonic Retro boards, whatever you think is canon, is canon.

 

Here's what he (Tyson Hesse) said:

Quote

Adventures ends with everything basically returning to status quo anyway. Encore and SMA both start the same way, with Sonic appearing back in Angel Island. If it needs to fit into any sort of timeline you could easily just say that it all happens during the time in that singular act in Angel Island and then Encore continues on from there for the rest of the game. That's my perspective on it anyway. 

And in a slightly later post:

Quote

I mean, I think it goes without saying that whatever happens in the game trumps what happens in the cartoon. I don't think Mania Adventures NEEDS to exist within canon to be enjoyed since it's the freedom from the canon that allowed it to get so wacky. 

 

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